Conservatives clinch longtime goal of booting Democrats from leadership ranks in Texas House

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The Texas House on Thursday voted to ban members of the minority party from leading committees, achieving a major goal for conservative Republicans – and upending a tradition of power sharing that had been in place since the 1970s.

The push to ban Democrats from leading House committees was a rallying cry for conservative activists who saw power sharing with the minority party as a betrayal of Republican voters. They said continuing to give leadership positions to Democrats stalled conservative legislation that they and the Republican Party of Texas supported.

Now, neither chamber of the Texas Legislature will have members of the minority party leading a committee for the first time since 1969, according to the Legislative Reference Library.

“This represents a sea change from where this Legislature has been,” said Rep. Harold Dutton, a Houston Democrat who is the third longest-serving lawmaker in the chamber, first elected in 1984.

Allowing Democrats to continue leading legislative committees was a major sticking point in the race for House speaker. Democrats sided with Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock Republican, because the other candidate in the race, Mansfield Republican David Cook, had pledged to block them out of leadership positions. Burrows had not weighed in on the question saying he would leave the decision to the chambers’ 150 members – a sign Democrats saw as an openness to continuing the House’s long-standing tradition of power-sharing.

The vote for the rules change was approved by a vote of 116-23 with 61 Republicans and 55 Democrats voting in favor.

In a major twist, some of the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers opposed taking up debate on the rules change. Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a Republican hardliner from Arlington, said the move appeared to “cram rules through” without room for discussion and gave Democrats more power. Tinderholt unsuccessfully asked his colleagues to postpone debate on the rules until Monday.

In a news conference after the vote, Democrats seemed resigned to the fact that they would lose their ability to chair committees but said they had maintained a seat at the table in the House. Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston lawmaker who leads the House Democratic Caucus, mocked hardliners, like Tinderholt, who voted against the change.

"The people who were yelling the most about banning Democrat chairs voted against banning Democrat chairs," he said. "What I think you saw here today is the House united and working on on a set of rules that while it has hurt Democrats and reduced our power, but at least gives us some ability to interact in the process and have our constituents' needs met."

Under the new rules, House committees will be led by a member of the majority party and the vice chairs will be members of the minority party. That would strip Democrats of key leadership positions but give them a modicum of power-sharing in the chamber.

Conservative activists and politicians said that left the door open for Democrats to continue to pull the strings under new subcommittees created under this year’s rules. Unlike in past years, where the leaders of committees appointed subcommittees, this year’s rules allow the speaker to appoint the leaders and members of the standing subcommittees.

Key committees like public health, where abortion legislation could be discussed, and Ways and Means, where property taxes will be taken up, will have subcommittees.

The House will have fewer permanent committees than last session, with lawmakers abolishing and condensing its previous 34 standing committees to 30. Lawmakers created an entirely new committee on “Delivery of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, in a nod to the new federal group run by tech billionaire Elon Musk. That committee will focus on eliminating inefficiencies in state services as well as overseeing open government matters and the regulation of the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.

Legislators did away with eight committees: Business and Industry, County Affairs, Defense And Veterans’ Affairs, Homeland Security and Public Safety, International Relations and Economic Development, Juvenile Justice and Family Issues, Resolutions Calendars and Urban Affairs. But they rolled many of the duties of those committees into three new committees named Homeland Security, Public Safety and Veterans’ Affairs’; Intergovernmental Affairs; and Trade, Workforce and Economic Development.

Five of the eight abolished committees were previously run by Democrats and two were run by Republicans: J.M. Lozano of Kingsville and Ryan Guillen of Rio Grande City, who voted against Burrows in the speaker’s race.

Burrows is expected to appoint committee chairs in the next few weeks. Under state law, the Legislature cannot approve any bills within the session’s first 60 days unless they are designated as emergency items by the governor.

But Thursday's vote may be the start of a more contentious session. Republicans who opposed the resolution to change the rules had planned to offer amendments that would address some of their concerns. But after about an hour of debate, Rep. Jared Patterson, a Frisco Republican who is a Burrows lieutenant, gathered 67 signatures from fellow lawmakers to end debate and call for a vote on the resolution. Only 25 signatures are needed to call such a motion.

Rep. Mike Schofield, a Katy Republican who wanted to continue the debate, spoke heatedly against Patterson's motion and warned that he and his allies would employ similar tactics later in the session.

"I know how to get 25 votes, too, and I promise you if you do this to us, we will do it to you," he said.

More than 100 members from both parties voted to end the debate.

After the vote on the House rules, Schofield told The Texas Tribune: "The way we keep this place functioning and keep it from exploding is letting everybody have their say. What we decided today is we don’t do that anymore, that we’re going to cram things down, and no one has the opportunity to say anything about it or represent their constituents."

Renzo Downey and Sneha Dey contributed to this report.